Hannah Stewart – författare

The South Asia region presents a confluence of major climate impacts and key security issues. From a weather and climate standpoint, the region experiences a wide range of hazards, such as the recent heatwaves, droughts, storms, and floods that have upended the lives and livelihoods of millions of people. From a demographic and socioeconomic standpoint, the region is experiencing rapid transformations and progress, even as fundamental challenges such as poverty and inequality persist. From a security standpoint, the region is the setting for a range of social and political dynamics that impact U.S. interests, including conflict at national and subnational levels; regional rivalries; and the imprint of global geopolitics.

On October 26-27, 2022, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, under the auspices of the National Academies Climate Security Roundtable, convened a workshop to explore climate security in South Asia. Over two days, workshop participants considered some of the underlying climate, development, and geopolitical dynamics at play in the South Asia region; explored a set of historical case studies and future scenarios for climate change and security in South Asia; and they considered the available tools for analysis and forecasting climate-related risks. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussion of the workshop.

Responding to climate change will entail massive socio-emotional and behavioral changes. Translating policies, investments, or built infrastructure-reshaping mandates into real and sustained local impact that incorporates accountability and culture change will require hands-on work. Adaptive societal responses to climate change will succeed or fail based on the attitudes, behaviors, social cohesion and capital, organizational and emotional strengths, and collective impact and input of all stakeholders.

To consider how to integrate, align, and converge the broad mix of social, behavioral, and cognitive sciences to produce new insights and inform efforts for enhanced human responses to environmental change, Board on Environmental Change and Society of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine convened this 2023 workshop, entitled Committee on Integrating the Human Sciences to Scale Societal Responses to Environmental Change: A Workshop. The workshop was intended to investigate ways to accelerate and deepen conversations within the social sciences and to focus on synthesis, especially for the purpose of increasing community capacity to understand and effectively respond to climate change-induced environmental changes - at scales ranging from the individual to the household to the community, and all the way up to the level of state and international governance. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussion of the workshop.

To advance a systems understanding of climate-related security risks in the Central America region, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convened a workshop titled Climate Security in Central America on May 3-4, 2023. The workshop was held under the auspices of the National Academies Climate Security Roundtable. Over two days, workshop participants considered some of the underlying environmental, social, economic, and political dynamics at play in Central America; they explored indicators and pathways for climate-related security risks in the region; and they considered the available tools for analyzing and forecasting these risks. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussion of the workshop.